The Wedge of Gold

by C. C. Goodwin

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  SPRINGING A TRAP.

  Sedgwick found waiting for him advices from the mine, all of which werefavorable and the output for another month, less the expenses of miningand milling, which amounted in the aggregate to something over $90,000,had been forwarded to the Bank of France.

  The Wedge of Gold Mining Company was reorganized. Browning was madepresident; Sedgwick, treasurer; McGregor, secretary; and all three, withJordan, directors. A regular dividend of two shillings per share, and aspecial dividend of as much more was declared, aggregating in allL30,000. This was given to the _Times_ for publication, and attachedto it was the following note:

  "The reporter of the _Times_ was able to obtain the following particularsof this wonderful property from the secretary:

  "'A forty-stamp mill has been in operation on the property since Junelast. The mill yielded in June, above expenses, L17,000 and 15 shillings;in July, L18,000 and 5 shillings. The ore already developed above thetunnel level is sufficient to insure the running of the present works totheir full capacity for five years to come. The ore on the tunnel levelis equal to any in the mine, and the ore chute has been demonstrated byexploration on the tunnel level to be at least 630 feet in length, withan average width of 16 feet. The tunnel cuts the mine at a depth of 500feet. The office of the company in London is No. ----, ---- Street. Theofficers are John Browning, president; James Sedgwick, treasurer; HughMcGregor, secretary; and these, with Thomas Jordan, make up the directoryof the company.'"

  When, next morning, Jenvie, Hamlin and Stetson read the above in the_Times_, they were filled with consternation.

  "I feared that man Sedgwick from the first," said Jenvie. "Our firstaccount of him, that 'he must be a prize-fighter,' was true. He hasknocked us out, and he has made no more noise about it than does abull-dog when he takes a pig by the ear."

  "What are we to do?" asked Hamlin.

  "We must take in enough stock to cover our shortage at once," saidJenvie, "even if we have to pay L1 per share for it."

  So a messenger was sent to the office of the broker through which thestock had been shorted, to buy at any price up to L1.

  He returned with the information that the stock could be had, but theprice was L6 per share.

  Then the three men realized for the first time the trap which had beenset for them, and how fatal had been its spring. The messenger was atonce sent out again, this time to the office of the company. He found thesecretary, who referred him to the ---- Bank, from which the dividendswere to be paid. There he found stock for sale, but the price demandedwas L6 per share.

  He returned home and made his report. The three men gazed at each otherwith blank looks of despair.

  "Thirty thousand shares at L6 will take all we have," said Hamlin.

  "And I shorted 10,000 shares besides," said Jenvie.

  "So did I," said Hamlin.

  "So did I," said Stetson.

  "It seems clear enough that we are absolutely ruined," said Hamlin.

  "I wonder what has become of that Portuguese, Emanuel," said Hamlin.

  At that moment he entered the office. He looked like the picture ofdespair. He broke out with: "It is awful! I have just heard ze truth. Itwas that American who did it. When you thought last year that he had goneto America, he, with another American, had gone to Africa.

  "They found ze mine. They found a way out from it by going in theopposite direction from which they came. Sedgwick went by Australiato San Francisco, and ordered a forty-stamp mill. The other Americanremained, and opened the mine by a tunnel. Sedgwick came back this way,and, left here to meet the mill at Port Natal.

  "It has been running three months. Two months' proceeds are here, and paydividends of four shillings, and it is good for two shillings per monthfor years; with machinery doubled, good for four shillings per month foryears to come. The stock has gone to L6; it will go to L10 so soon as itis well understood. And I lost it all, because I had not the sense tofind that way out from ze mine. The road by the trail would have costL75,000 or L100,000, and I believed only impassable mountains were to zewest."

  "How did you find all this out?" asked Jenvie.

  "From ze Secretary, McGregor. He was master of ze ship that carried themachinery from San Francisco, and he brought ze Americans from PortNatal. One was very sick with the fever, and came near dying. He had,besides, one wound which he received with ze Boers coming out to thecoast from the mine. They are two devils. Ten or a dozen Boers attackedthem to get the first month's bullion, and they two killed five of them,and drove ze rest away."

  "I wish the Boers had killed them both," said Jenvie.

  "They are hard men to kill," said Emanuel. "McGregor says, when ashoreone day at D'Umber, there was a chicken-shooting match. The chickens wereburied in the ground all but their heads, and the people were shooting atten paces when these men passed. They asked about it, and asked if theymight shoot with their own pistols; and when permission was given, theydrew their weapons and killed six chickens each in a minute, and werelaughing all the time as though it were nothing. They are devils, shureenough."

  "Do you think Browning knew all about this from the first?" asked Hamlin.

  "Not at all," said Emanuel. "No one in London knew where the Americanshad gone, except his wife. Browning thought he had gone back to America.His wife knew. She got a dispatch from Australia, and letters from PortNatal ze same day, saying he was going to San Francisco to ordermachinery, and would return this way and be with her in four months,and then she left at once and beat him a week into San Francisco.

  "And I am ruined. My little stock is all gone. A mine worth L2,000,000 Isold for L2,000." And he went out.

  "What can we do?" asked Jenvie. "I expect a notice every moment to callat the broker's and settle."

  "Can we not assign our property?" asked Hamlin.

  "We could," said Jenvie, "but to-morrow we should all be looking throughthe bars of a prison."

  "And even Grace was in the conspiracy to rob us," said Hamlin, in aninjured tone.

  "She is a brave, true woman, I think," said Jenvie, "and as it looks tome, she is the only one to whom we can now appeal."

  "May be so," said Hamlin. "Her husband worships her, I am told."

  "Suppose we go to your house and persuade your wife to go and bring herhome where we can see her," said Jenvie.

  This was agreed to, and with heavy hearts the three men entered acarriage and were driven to the Hamlin house.

  As they went up the steps, Grace Sedgwick herself opened the door. Shehad been to see her mother, and was just going out.

  "Come back, Grace," said her step-father; "we wish to see youparticularly."

  She returned with them, and her step-father told her how they wereinvolved--in what danger they were, not only of absolute ruin, but ofa criminal prosecution, and begged her to see her husband and intercedewith him.

  "My husband needs no entreaties to do what is right," said Grace."Suppose the case were reversed, what would you grant my husband?"

  They all hung their heads. Grace looked at them and continued: "Yourobbed dear, confiding Jack of his fortune, which he had honestlyacquired. You robbed him for the double purpose of making him a beggar,and of breaking his heart, though one of you was his step-father, anotherthe step-father of the woman he loved better than his own life. It wasthat which set Jack's nearest friend to be your Nemesis. Our troth hadjust been plighted. It was like death to part us, but he who is myhusband said to me: 'There must be no scandal, if we can help it, butthis wrong must be righted. I must go to Africa, and if I can work outthe dear boy's deliverance, it must be done.' And I consented to it. Hemoved secretly, but with the force and energy of his nature. He and thefriend who went with him have performed a great work. They have takenwhat was unloaded upon Jack as worthless, and converted it into somethingricher than a little kingdom. It seems, too, that in the blindness ofyour avarice, you dared fate itself to make more money out of that wreck,and now you are in the toils. Su
ppose my husband had done by you as youhave dealt with Jack, and you had him where you now are, what mercy wouldyou show him?"

  They were silent. They had not even self-respect to sustain them.

  Grace waited a moment, and then went on: "But he is of differentmaterial. There is no malice in his nature. He cares nothing for thetriumph which comes through revenge.

  "He knew when you dared to sell that stock short, told me of it, andasked what would be right. I replied that I thought if you would restoreto Jack what he had been robbed of, with interest on the money to date,it would be fair; and his answer was that to compel you to do that verything was what caused him to leave me and go to Africa.

  "In that you can get an idea of him. He had money enough for himself andJack both; he had no desire for revenge, but he was determined that youshould be made to do justice to his friend, whom you had so greatlywronged, and that, if possible, it should be done without any noise."

  "Do you think he would settle that way?" asked Jenvie.

  "He has no settlement to make," said Grace; "but I think he wouldrecommend Jack to settle that way."

  "And where could we meet Jack?" asked Jenvie.

  "I do not know," said Grace, "nor is it necessary. I think the brokerwith whom you dealt in the stocks has authority to settle. That was alittle trap set for you. There is not a share of the stock that is not inthe company's office at this moment."

  "I did not mean to rob Jack," said Hamlin. "I wanted to break hisengagement with Rose, hoping he would turn to you."

  "We all understood that from the first," said Grace, "but we had madeentirely different arrangements--arrangements worth two of that--whichsuited us all around." And bowing, the young wife left the room.

  The three men found, upon visiting the broker, that he had receivedorders to settle with them on the terms outlined by Grace, and theycomplied by turning over what money they had and some outside property.

  It left them with fair fortunes. But the story got out through Emanuel;their prestige was broken, and they closed up their business within a fewdays, and disappeared from the business walks of London. Two months laterJenvie died in a moment of apoplexy; the succeeding autumn Hamlinsuccumbed to typhoid fever, and Stetson sailed away to lose himselfin the depths of Australia.